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Maximality in the Semantics of Wh-constructions

Maximality in the Semantics of Wh-constructions PDF Author: Hotze Rullmann
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Comparison (Grammar).
Languages : en
Pages : 268

Book Description


Maximality in the Semantics of Wh-constructions

Maximality in the Semantics of Wh-constructions PDF Author: Hotze Rullmann
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Comparison (Grammar).
Languages : en
Pages : 268

Book Description


The Semantics of Evaluativity

The Semantics of Evaluativity PDF Author: Jessica Rett
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199602476
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 215

Book Description
This book focuses on the semantic phenomenon of evaluativity and its consequences across constructions. Evaluativity has traditionally been associated exclusively with the positive construction, a term for sentences with a gradable adjective but with no overt degree morphology. John is tall is evaluative because it entails that John is tall relative to a contextually valued standard. John is taller than Sue and John is as tall as Sue are not evaluative because both could be used even if John and Sue were short. Previous accounts of evaluativity have assumed that it is not part of the inherent meaning of adjectives, but is contributed by a null morpheme. Jessica Rett argues against this analysis, proposing that no null morpheme is required. Instead, evaluativity is explained on the basis of assumptions that speakers and hearers make about the relationship between the simplicity of a situation and the simplicity of the language used to describe that situation; the analysis is couched in recent approaches to Gricean conversational implicature.

Semantics - Lexical Structures and Adjectives

Semantics - Lexical Structures and Adjectives PDF Author: Claudia Maienborn
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110623137
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 588

Book Description
Discover vital research on the lexical and cognitive meanings of words. In this exciting book from a team of world-class researchers, in-depth articles explain a wide range of topics, including thematic roles, sense relation, ambiguity and comparison. The authors focus on the cognitive and conceptual structure of words and their meaning extensions such as coercion, metaphors and metonymies. The book features highly cited material – available in paperback for the first time since its publication – and is an essential starting point for anyone interested in lexical semantics, especially where it meets other cognitive and conceptual research.

The Semantics of Gradability, Vagueness, and Scale Structure

The Semantics of Gradability, Vagueness, and Scale Structure PDF Author: Elena Castroviejo
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319777912
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 293

Book Description
This volume is the first to focus specifically on experimental studies of the semantics of gradability, scale structure and vagueness. It presents support for and challenges to current formal analyses of these phenomena in view of experimentally collected data, highlighting the ways semantic and pragmatic theory can benefit from experimental methodologies. The papers in the volume contribute to an explicit and detailed account of the use, representation, and online processing of gradable and vague expressions using various kinds of controlled speaker judgment tasks, eye tracking, and ERP. The aim is to strengthen the foundations of experimental semantics and promote interaction between linguists, psycholinguists, psychologists, and philosophers who are interested in the semantics of natural language. Using data representing different languages and a variety of nominal and adjectival constructions, including degree modification and comparatives, the contributions address scale-based classifications of gradable predicates, such as the absolute vs. relative distinction; the nature of the standards for applicability of gradable expressions and the ways in which standards are determined; the nature of dimensions and multidimensionality in the meaning of scalar expressions; and the role of embodiment, subjectivity, and sociolinguistic considerations in the use and understanding of gradable expressions.

Semantics with Assignment Variables

Semantics with Assignment Variables PDF Author: Alex Silk
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108875173
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Book Description
This pioneering study combines insights from philosophy and linguistics to develop a novel framework for theorizing about linguistic meaning and the role of context in interpretation. A key innovation is to introduce explicit representations of context - assignment variables - in the syntax and semantics of natural language. The proposed theory systematizes a spectrum of 'shifting' phenomena in which the context relevant for interpreting certain expressions depends on features of the linguistic environment. Central applications include local and non-local contextual dependencies with quantifiers, attitude ascriptions, conditionals, questions, and relativization. The result is an innovative philosophically informed compositional semantics compatible with the truth-conditional paradigm. At the forefront of contemporary interdisciplinary research into meaning and communication, Semantics with Assignment Variables is essential reading for researchers and students in a diverse range of fields.

Direct Compositionality

Direct Compositionality PDF Author: Chris Barker
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199204373
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 448

Book Description
This book examines the hypothesis of "direct compositionality" which requires that semantic interpretation proceed in tandem with syntactic combination. In the first extended discussion of the hypothesis for twenty years, contributors from both sides of the debate draw on examples from a wide range of languages and discuss the place of direct compositionality in generative grammar.

Graded Modality

Graded Modality PDF Author: Daniel Lassiter
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198701349
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Book Description
This book explores graded expressions of modality, such as more likely than and quite possible, which provide a rich and underexplored source of insight into modal semantics. The volume explores and expands the typology of scales among English adjectives and uses the result to shed light on the meanings of a variety of epistemic and deontic modals.

Epistemic Indefinites

Epistemic Indefinites PDF Author: Luis Alonso-Ovalle
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 019966529X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Book Description
This book examines the semantics and pragmatics of determiners or pronouns that signal ignorance on the part of the speaker, such as Spanish algun. It offers novel empirical observations and important theoretical insights on epistemic indefinites and related topics such as modal free relatives, modified numerals, and epistemic modals.

Language Use and Linguistic Structure. Proceedings of the Olomouc Linguistic Colloquium 2023

Language Use and Linguistic Structure. Proceedings of the Olomouc Linguistic Colloquium 2023 PDF Author: Janebová, Markéta
Publisher: Palacký University Olomouc
ISBN: 8024465086
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 239

Book Description
The latest volume of OLINCO proceedings is a selected set of sixteen papers that grew from presentations at OLINCO 2023 - the international Olomouc Linguistics Colloquium held at Palacký University in June 2021. The papers collected here are unified by the topic of the colloquium: Language Use and Linguistic Structure, in that they all, in one way or the other, address the central questions of the study of human language. They all use standard scientific methodology and theory and solidly researched empirical evidence in favor of formalized structural representations of the language system.

Focus, Evaluativity, and Antonymy

Focus, Evaluativity, and Antonymy PDF Author: Sam Alxatib
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030378063
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 193

Book Description
This book uncovers properties of focus association with 'only' by examining the interaction between the particle and bare (or “evaluative”) gradable terms. Its empirical building blocks are paradigms involving upward-scalar terms like 'few' and 'rarely', and their downward-scalar antonyms 'many' and 'frequently', an area that has not been studied previously in the literature. The empirical claim is that associations of the former type give rise to unexpected readings, and the proposed theoretical explanation draws on the properties of the latter type of association. In presenting the details, the book deconstructs the so-called scalar presupposition of 'only' and derives it from constraints against its vacuous use. This view is then combined with a semantics of the evaluative adjectives 'many' and 'few' to explain why the unavailable (but expected) meanings of the given constructions are unavailable. The attested (but unexpected) readings of 'only+few/rarely' associations are derived from independently motivated LFs in which the degree expressions are existentially closed. Finally, the book provides new findings, based on the core proposal, about 'only if' constructions, and about the interaction between 'only' and other upward-scalar modified numerals (comparatives, and 'at most'). The book thus provides new data and a new theoretical view of the semantic properties of 'only', and connects it to the semantics of gradable expressions.